


The Diner

by SolarMorrigan



Category: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahame-Smith
Genre: Gen, Henry is there by mention, I love outsider perspective, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:40:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29845782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolarMorrigan/pseuds/SolarMorrigan
Summary: There has been a man occupying Cathy’s corner booth for the better part of two hours, and he is having a Bad Day.
Relationships: Abraham Lincoln/Henry Sturges
Kudos: 3





	The Diner

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I work at a hotel and sometimes guests come in and loiter in the front office and sometimes they come down there to make phone calls for some reason? Usually this is irritating because that is where my desk is and I have to sit there and listen to them talk on the phone. Do they think I can't hear them? But anyway, one of our extended stay guests came down and started a video call with one of his grandkids and I knew he'd been feeling kind of down and I just heard him cheer up so much over the course of that short call and it actually... put me in a better mood, too. So I wrote this

There has been a man occupying Cathy’s corner booth for the better part of two hours, and he is having a Bad Day.

After working as a waitress for a good few years Cathy likes to think she’s a pretty good judge of people, but it really doesn’t take any kind of social genius to tell that this guy is just in a mood. He’d come in wearing a frown and a pair of sunglasses and had yet to take either off, and he had sounded so surly when ordering that Cathy had hesitated to ask him how he wanted his eggs.

(Scrambled, as it turned out. He hadn’t been impolite about it, or actually about anything so far, but there’s something about him Cathy still hesitates to poke at.)

He’d mostly just pushed his food around on his plate for a bit before leaving it at the end of the table for Cathy to grab. Since then, he’s been nursing what Cathy _thinks_ —though she isn’t quite sure—has been the same cup of coffee for the last hour and a half. He waves Cathy off any time she offers to refresh the carafe, and she’s stopped asking.

Crunched up in the booth, he’s been alternately frowning at a book that he doesn’t seem to be reading and at a sketchbook he barely seems to be doodling in. Cathy’s been referring to him in her head as the Tall Man, because it amuses her, but also because the guy had towered over Cathy’s respectable five-feet-five-inches when she’d walked him to his table. There’s also something familiar about him, in a distant sort of way, but with his face partially obscured by sunglasses, there’s really no telling. He probably just has One of Those Faces.

They get people like this in the diner now and then—people having Bad Days, not tall people; Cathy really can’t say she’s noticed exactly how many tall people come in to eat versus people who aren’t tall—but it’s not as common to see them during lunch. Usually, they come in in the middle of the night, unable to sleep and wary of being alone.

Cathy eyes the Tall Man’s sunglasses and shrugs to herself. Maybe he’s used to working nights. Maybe this _is_ the middle of the night for him.

Between the height and the clear bad mood, the Tall Man would have been intimidating, but for the fact he’s generally been polite to Cathy, and he’s also about as hunched in on himself as a person can get without just resting their forehead on the tabletop. It doesn’t really add up to a threatening picture.

Cathy has, aside from the perfunctory eye she keeps on all the guests that camp out at her tables, been leaving him alone. She has enough trouble with her own depression, she can’t cure a stranger’s. She can be polite and pleasant and make sure his stay is a nice one, but someone else is going to have to take responsibility for improving the Tall Man’s day.

She’s two tables over, cleaning up the mess from a party of four, when she hears a deep, soulful voice strike up a tune in opposition to the nasally 80s pop piping through the overhead speakers. Looking up in confusion, Cathy realizes she recognizes the voice.

It’s… Elvis?

“– _walk like an angel… You talk like an angel… but I got wise. You’re the devil_ –”

Then the Tall Man finishes fumbling with his cell phone and answers it.

“Hello, Henry.”

The change in his voice is immediate. Where before he had been brusque and formal, he’s suddenly warm and fond. It almost feels like a violation just to listen. All the same, Cathy chances a look at him; he’s not smiling, but he looks… less sad, which is something.

With a little smile of her own, Cathy carts a stack of dishes back to the kitchen. When she returns to finish cleaning the table, the Tall Man has uncurled from his defensive, unhappy position and is leaning back a little in his seat. He’s still on the phone.

“I’m glad,” he’s saying, then he pauses, and when he continues his voice is so soft that Cathy can only just hear him. “You know, I admit, I do still miss writing letters to you, but in this case, I don’t mind trading intimacy for immediacy.”

Cathy awards herself a point. She had been guessing that the Henry on the other end of the conversation was either a very close friend or a significant other (your voice didn’t do _that_ when you spoke to a relative, no matter how dear they were) and the _intimacy of writing letters_ tips the scale in favor of the latter.

“No, today’s been… fine,” the Tall Man lies poorly into the phone before something like a sheepish look crosses what’s visible of his face; apparently Henry had called him out on it. “How do you always know? You’re half the world away.”

There are no more tables around the Tall Man to clean, and Cathy has to move out of earshot of the conversation after that (she’s given up pretending she doesn’t eavesdrop; people just have to accept that if they’re going to talk on the phone in public, they might be overheard), but it’s not long before the need to remove the lunch special menus brings her back around.

“–it’s important. You’ll be done soon, in any case, and then you’ll be home.” _Now_ the Tall Man is smiling, if only a little. “But did you call just to check up, or… ah.”

There’s a pause.

“No, I didn’t forget, it’s only…” the Tall Man pulls his phone away from his ear to check the time and makes a surprised sort of “whoops” face when he catches sight of it, going back to speaking into the phone. “Well anyway, I’m leaving now.”

The Tall Man looks right up at Cathy—apparently he’s not going to pretend she can’t hear him, either—and she’s quick to pull his check from her apron pocket, placing it on his table. He nods his thanks and digs his wallet out of his pocket.

“Yes, Henry, thanks ever so for taking the time badger me when you’re not even in the country,” he drawls as he pulls a few bills out of his wallet and then, upon checking the total, a few more. “Truly, your timekeeping skills are one of the things I love about you.”

Cathy lets out a breath of a laugh and the Tall Man turns his quiet smile on her. He pulls the phone away from his ear again, pressing the receiver into his shoulder long enough to say, “I don’t need change, thank you for the meal,” before scooping up his things and scooting out of the booth.

Letting him go with a quick “thank you” of her own, Cathy listens with amusement as the conversation carries on and out of earshot.

“Oh yes, one of the _many_ things,” is the last thing she can hear the Tall Man say, but she doesn’t think he sounds quite as sarcastic as he means to.

It used to irritate Cathy when people would talk on the phone in the restaurant; it made it difficult for her to do her job, it led to misunderstandings, and it would bother other guests in the vicinity. Now, though, it interests her. She likes trying to discern what she can from hearing just one side of the conversation, and her favorite times are the ones when the person on the other end of the line is clearly loved.

And even if the Tall Man isn’t as enamored of Henry as he’d sounded, the call had certainly put him in a good mood – he’d left a twenty dollar tip.

Brows going up, Cathy counts back through the cash just to be sure and finds herself lingering over a five dollar bill in the middle of the stack, staring at Abraham Lincoln’s wisely serene face. Something about it seems suddenly and oddly familiar.

Blinking, Cathy shakes the feeling off. It’s familiar because she sees it nearly every day. What other reason would there be?

With a little more pep in her step, Cathy goes to the register to ring out the ticket, wondering if Henry, wherever he is, knows that he’s managed to improve the days of two people in one go.

**Author's Note:**

> I also used to work in a diner, a setting which made more sense to me than a hotel lobby for some reason
> 
> I am also on [Tumblr](https://solarmorrigan.tumblr.com/)


End file.
